Saturday, 30 June 2012

Monsoon bliss

"It is a sound most beloved to me. The sound of rain in the night. A
sound that makes me glad that I am where I am ─ In my little cottage in
Mundakotukurussi hearing the rains fall─ That I have a roof over my bed
and bedclothes to snuggle into. It brings to mind wellbeing while lost
in meandering thoughts.
For days now I have waited for the rain as each summer day emerged
wrapped by the heat. A woolen shroud that held within it the legs of
time, stilling all movement, hindering every thought and breath.

The cicadas vent their fury. All day from all around. At times the
vigour subsides but the music of the trees do not cease. It is a dry
sound like the rasping hiss of tinders rubbing against each other. The
sound of summer.

The fields lie brown and baked. Tufts of paddy stand. Brown flowers that crackle even as you look at it. Wells dry. Sweat prickles every brow and rushes down the temple. Exhaustion lines every face and dogs every step. Most evenings the clouds gather; a herd of grey cows bearing rain in
their udders. Sometimes they consent to being milked and allow the rain
to flow…

Sometimes they wander away leaving a restless parched land in their wake.The thunderstorms seldom last long. The land sizzles and splutters under
the impact of the rain. Every drop is lapped up by the thirsty land. A
puddle is rare. Wetness even rarer.The nights are still. The fireflies have gone into hiding.

In the morning you know the heat will reappear. A daytime ghoul
strangling the breath of the hour. Harder and harder. In your heart you
know a fear then. The worst fear of all: Will this ever end? And then
what next?

Everyone starts talking about the monsoon then. Everyone I know and
meet. Our conversations weave around the monsoon. It perhaps becomes the
only way to live the summer through….All through May, newspapers are
scanned for meteorological reports on the monsoon sightings…’When the
monsoon arrives’ becomes the mantra of survival. And sanity.

Late in the afternoon the heat seems to hit an absolute crescendo. The
whirring fan circulates the warm air. Around and around. There never
will be respite, one sighs.

Then it begins. One day the listless air begins to move. Clouds gather
and move up the coast. Leaves rustle and the skies darken. Lightening
and thunder. The bars of heat loosen and with its first drops, the rain
snap apart the inert month. The earth feeds of this rain. A greedy baby devouring the colostrum of
fecundity. More, more, more, the earth craves for this thin watery rain.
Then sated for the moment, it belches. A deep dank fragrance. Moist
earth laden with the memories of sun-baked days and crumbling surfaces.

The wetness of rain. The wetness of release.Rain falls. On the skin it
feels as if it were a thousand arrows shot by a god. A tingling, a
ringing, a singing that punctured pores and raked the senses.

Sheets of rain that made islands of houses. A haze of water that
dispersed people and sound, trapping colour and light and refracting
reprieve.

Life exhales. The relief of having got past the summer.

In my little cottage, I lie on the bed staring at the roof. As the
thunder roll and heave, I cock an ear. For that first plop. I hear it
then. All over the cottage are plastic cans. Old paint buckets to
capture every errant drop that escapes through the roofing tiles. Plop.
Plop. Plop. The rain make its presence known.
Ever since I built the cottage, the onset of the monsoon causes a
nervous flittering in the pit of my stomach. I do not know what it is I
can do to stop the leaks.

Then someone suggests we toss hay on the roof. “It is only a temporary
measure but it should work for a while,” he says. “The poor do it all
the time. But, tell me, why did you get a tile roof put in instead of a
concrete one?

For the rain, I think. I hoped to lie in bed and hear that beloved
sound. The soft magical music of rain on tile roofs. The drip and drop
from the eaves.

The power goes off. It comes back in a minute and then goes off again.
On and off, on and off. In affluent homes, the emergency light or the
inverter comes on. I light a candle and place it in a saucer. There are
no harsh surprises, none of the not-knowing-what-to-do. With this I will
make do till morning or whatever time the power chooses to return.

I get up and go to sit in the verandah and watch the rain fall. A frog
leaps joyous with wetness. A world washed in rain is entertainment by
itself…"

Anita Nair is the bestselling author of The Better Man, Ladies Coupe,
Mistress and Lessons in Forgetting. Her books have been translated into
over 30 languages around the world. Her new novel Cut Like Wound will be
published in August 2012.

"The Blue Yonder has been offering Responsible holidays since early 2004 in India. An initiative that was set up to bring in attention of the world into a sadly depleted River Nila ( Bharatapuzha) in central Kerala is now the flag-bearer of Responsible Tourism movement in the country.

Based in the city of Bangalore, TBY now offers unique holiday experiences in Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Rajasthan, Kerala and Karnataka. Covering three primary areas of People, Culture and Wilderness, our holidays are designed in a way that it is economically, socially and environmentally just.

While practising RT, we have been building partnerships across the world to "create better places for people to live in and visit".

The content of this blog is an attempt to put together some of our initiatives."